


Something brave from your mouth

by JaqofSpades



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, Knifeplay, M/M, bring me your kinks and let Bass explain them, control play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-08 09:42:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1936134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which truths are told, and boundaries are tested.  (Or: Bass is the devil incarnate.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Swing me, way down south

**Author's Note:**

> Born of long straight roads, lots of thinking time, and my favourite song by the Dixie Chicks. I'm hoping to keep this fairly short given my constant state of too-many-wips. Multichaptered for pacing reasons only.

It rises as he yanks her back against him. One arm is a vise around her neck, the other an iron band across her belly, and surely there’s something she should be doing other than … this. But she knows exactly how many men are tramping up the stairs, calculated every line of sight, knows all her exits, and he’s hard and hot against her back, her human prison. She can feel sweat trickling down his chest, and the play of muscles in his arms and - the door splinters, and the men who tried so hard to be quiet outside burst through the doorway. 

Two in front, four behind– vagabonds by their clothes, but one is shouting orders, so maybe soldiers. A couple of guns and an assortment of swords, axes and clubs, and every one of them is staring through her, right at Monroe. Great. She just loves being relegated to collateral. 

Charlie throws herself into the fight, trying to remember everything she hates about the man behind her, cold and hard and the General once again. She twists and writhes, trying to land a bite or a kick, but he manacles her arms to her sides, almost ignoring her until the moment she feels the press of the knife against her throat.

She stills as the pinpricks of sensation well into tiny pearls of blood, and he pulls her in tighter, pinning her with his chin on the top of her head. His breath puffs hot against her ear as the bristles of his beard grab at her hair, and she can’t breathe, can’t think, until he lifts his head again to focus on their attackers. His attackers. Whatever.

“Stay back, or I kill the girl,” he says, almost casually, but that voice promises cold, naked steel. The search party, whoever the hell they are, don’t doubt him for a minute. She’d bet a pouch of diamonds they’d come looking for the vaguely shady prizefighter Jimmy King, and now? They’re facing down the notoriously homicidal General Monroe, hostage in hand. Charlie almost feels sorry for them.

Almost, because she’s the one with a knife at her throat and a notorious madman at her back. Not that he frightens her. Not really.

(Because maybe fear is a part of it. Danger, certainly. Or maybe it’s just the knife.) 

Now’s not the time to be thinking about exactly what it was that dragged that gasp from her throat and set her pulse to hammering. Not even the first time she has felt like this. Just the most undeniable. The minute his hand closed around her throat, the moment he imprisoned her against that impossibly hard body, she was subjected to a sly wash of heat that made her head spin. Every time he moves, every time he breathes, she burns a little bit more, and when the knife kisses her throat … she has to bite down on the moan.

He drags her out of the haze with a none-too-gentle shake. “Walk, bitch.” She obeys, one step at a time towards the soldiers, who hold their ground for a minute, two, then surrender to the threat in his eyes. He pulls his gun then, and fires through the doorway to ensure it's clear, before pushing her through and down the now cleared steps.

“You can let go of me now,” she snaps as they clear the boarding house and slip into the chaparral beyond.

“You sure?” he smirks, and no. No, she’s not. Dammit.

They’d had a priest, once, in the village, and he’d tried so hard to knock those strange, Catholic concepts into her scientist-raised head. She understands now. She’s expected to take it all on faith, this war she’s inherited from her mother and father and uncle. So many secrets, and even more lies, and this man, their devil incarnate.

And maybe he is, because wasn’t it knowledge the devil liked to tempt you with? And unlike Miles, unlike her mother, Monroe didn’t stint on the truth. Didn’t even look away, simply asked if she was sure she wanted to know.

She had nodded, that first time, and his mouth had quirked into a strange smile she’s only seen a few times since, bitterness and amusement and admiration all slugging it out.

“Lord help us. A truly brave Matheson,” he’d eventually said, and she clings to that now, as her body jangles and begs. Hopes that one day soon, it’ll actually be true.

Because if there’s anyone who has the answers she needs, it’s him. And if she leaves it any longer, she’s not going to give a damn about how it all went down; she’ll just dive in blind. Abandon good sense and self-preservation and all sense of shame for one more moment of his hands on her skin. 

Or around her throat.

(And there’s another question, right there.)

*

He watches her out of the corner of his eye, and tries to think of how to make sure Charlie’s okay without taking a knee to the balls. The plan had worked, they’d gotten away clean, the scratch on her throat has all but gone. But she’s too quiet.

It’s not that he presumes to know her or anything, but ... she hasn’t insulted him in hours. She’d actually thanked him when he’d swung her down from the vantage point they’d chosen to scout the terrain before heading west. In fact – that whole moment had been weird. He’d put it down to his unholy fascination with her delicious ass, but now he thought about it … her eyes had flicked up and collided with his before darting away, skittish.

Now there’s a word he never though he’d associate with Charlie Matheson.

If she was a normal girl, he’d put it down to infatuation and move on. God knows he had his hands all over her, even if it wasn’t in the fun way. And the shiver that had run through her when he’d pressed the knife to her throat … his thoughts had flashed straight to carnal. But that was him, and twenty years of depravity talking.

(So he liked sharp things. Some people did.)

“Especially Mathesons,” he remembers with a smirk, then chokes when he finds Charlie looking at him quizzically, one brow raised in question.

He shakes his head in denial, because no way are they getting into this. Ever. He likes his skin just the way it is, thank you very much, and talking shit like this with Miles’ beloved niece was one way to get dead, quick.

Even if she …

The revelation hits him harder than Miles ever did.

That gasp. The way she’d melted against him. And the full, throaty moan when he’d cut out his own fucking soul to mar the perfect column of her throat.

Jesus.

Miles wasn’t the only Matheson into pain.

And his resolution to keep his hands off his best friend’s niece was in danger of evaporating into the cloudless blue skies that stretched overhead.

“Change of plans,” he grits out, panicked. She’s a few paces ahead of him now, marching towards the horizon. All he knows is that if they sleep out tonight, huddled together for safety, no force under heaven will keep him from making the move they’ve both been waiting for since they’d mended their fences back in Willoughby. Since before then, if he’s honest.

“What?” She spins around, a study in full bitchface. (His already agitated cock leaps; it’s his curse that Charlie Matheson’s sneer does more for him than another girl’s smile.)

He tries not to think about what Charlie’s brilliant, glowing smile does to him, because there’s no answer for that particular madness. He’s not a good man. Or her frigging superhero, no matter how much one slip of a girl can make him want to be.

“We still don’t know who those goons were. Figure we should head back into town and find out. Could be important,” he offers. Orders didn’t work with Charlie, he’d learnt the hard way. He’d seen her fury when Miles excluded her from their plans, and the cold, hard wall of resistance that resulted.

He’d be doing them a favour, curing her of that. He still remembered what had worked for Miles. Eventually.

“Monroe? Are you okay?”

He’s breathing hard, his erection so painful he figures the filthy memories have to be branded on his forehead. Knives and rope and the woman with those tall, tall boots, and the noises his brother had made when he’d …

“Bass!”

Charlie has crossed the space between them, her hand warm on his arm as she shakes him, blue eyes caught on his own. He wants to tell her to step back, to get away, but instead he reaches out his own hand, and traces the angry line he left on her neck.

“It won’t even leave a mark,” he says, and it’s not the apology it should be. Leave it, he wills her. Just ignore me. I can’t be that guy. Not with you.

But Charlie Matheson doesn’t take his orders.

“Did you want it to?”

Lie to her. Walk away. Laugh or something.

“Yes,” he grates. He seizes her wrist and looks at the brand with disgust. “That’s the Monroe Militia. The dumb shits who grabbed you. This ...,” his thumb skates along the tender trail, back and forth, back and forth, “this would have been mine.”

She swallows, unnerved, and he looks away. Her question is as unexpected as it is devastating.

“I don’t understand. It didn’t hurt. Not really. It felt …”

Now it’s Charlie who looks away, colour staining her cheeks. He sees her shame, and it breaks him. She has nothing to be ashamed of, his Charlie. She’s glorious.

“Good?” he supplies.

She rises her face to his, and there’s a confession there, and a plea.

“Yeah. Like … really good.” Her voice shakes a little, but he can hear her relief. He remembers how it felt, to realise you’re not wrong, or twisted. Just … different. And not alone.

“Exhilirating. Kinda satisfying.” He hesitates, and then bites the bullet. Looks like they’re having this conversation after all. “Orgasmic.”

She gulps and turns away, but not before he hears the muttered response.

“Not yet,” she says, and it’s not a challenge, asshole. She doesn’t mean it that way.

Does she?


	2. Sing me, something brave from your mouth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the plot descended and shoved the smut aside for now. But I promise it's just for now!

“Orgasmic,” he says, and it crystallises for her then, as bright and shining as any false hope. 

Charlie lets out the long, shaky breath she seems to have been holding for months – since that first night in new Vegas, if she’s honest. Seeing him fight had just been the trigger, she tells herself. Any man could have done it. She wasn’t really obsessed with the monster who killed her father and brother, and probably did unspeakable things to her mother.

She just liked the pain.

Charlie remembers fighting with Jason, and how it had heated her blood. If it was more simmer than hot flame, it was because he protected her. Kept her safe. And it’s obvious now, why she and Connor hadn’t really sparked – they’d laughed together. Nothing painful about that. There had been other men, too, bartenders and bounty hunters and pretty boys who’d smiled instead of stared, but she'd had neither the time or inclination for anything other than short, sharp satisfaction.

It was _nothing_ to do with Monroe.

(The things she saw in delirium? Those half-formed images she used to tip herself over the edge? Sword-callused hands and the rough rasp of stubble, liquid-smooth voice and that blue flame that simmered then scorched? Mere incoherent fantasy.)

The lapses into pure lust will stop now that she understands, she promises herself. Know thyself, know thine enemy. Charlie flinches and has to concede the point. This so-called enemy always has her back and is the closest thing to a friend she has. 

Her conscience doesn’t much like the label 'friend', either, but it’s a million times better than whatever it was they were hurtling towards. She has to work with the man, and if he makes her laugh occasionally, it’s easier to put up with him. Not as much fun as travelling with Miles, but … not all that different, either. Sometimes she’ll call back to him, forgetting, and he’ll fire something back that could have come from Miles’ mouth.

Sometimes it’ll be things that never would have.

She and Monroe had left Austin a week ago with one objective: to find a secret Patriot camp that was said to house the last high-ranked officers in the Patriot hierarchy. Blanchard’s orders to his newly-reinstated General had specified they be brought back for trial, but Monroe had just snorted, leaving her nodding in agreement while everyone else blustered. Maybe that’s why.

“Just Charlie,” Monroe had shrugged when asked who he wanted for the mission.

“Corporal Matheson hasn’t yet completed her orientation,” Hansen, the red-faced despot in charge of training had spluttered.

“Corporal?” Monroe had snorted. “Please. That girl was killing Patriots when you were sitting in your bunker playing with your worry beads. Fuck your orientation.” 

She’d been standing in the back of the circle of men, there only because Monroe had told her to be, and was shouldering her way out the tent when he called her back.

“Where are you going, kid?”

“To get out of this fucking uniform. And grab my stuff. Leave at dawn?”

Monroe’s laugh was a short, impressed bark. “And that, pussies, is how you be a soldier. Dismissed.”

So maybe it was okay to like him a little bit. He was good in the field, she’ll give him that, generous with his advice and unstinting in his appreciation of her skill.

Not today, though. They are perched high on the cliff overlooking a box canyon, wedged into a one-person wide fissure in the rock. There’s a huddle of tan tents hundreds of metres below, with several dozen soldiers scurrying about. Good recon demands two sets of eyes, so Charlie is sprawled full length on Monroe’s back, trying to figure out which tents hold the top brass.

Monroe is focusing on the surprising number of riders coming and going - including the search party they’d outwitted in town three days ago.

“Morons,” he mutters, Charlie can’t help but move, legs clamping around his and hands grabbing at his shoulders as his back rolls beneath her.

“Stop fucking wriggling!” he snaps, and Charlie freezes, before giving an exploratory wiggle to ensure she still can. Being wedged in the rock is uncomfortable. Being on top of Monroe is even more so.

Unlike him, she’s not completely locked in by the rock on both sides of her, and the body above. She tries not to feel bad for him – featherweight her ass – but she hasn’t survived Marine boot camp, thank you very much. Staying still is one thing, but stretched out on top of another human being? The width of his back like a broad sea beneath you, his ass twitching underneath your belly, and shoulderblades poking into your breasts?

Nothing to do with Monroe, she tells herself, the mantra already tired after several days of constant use. 

But it doesn’t help, the way he’s been looking at her. Once, his smouldering regard had left her quivering and breathless, but since he’d reassumed the mantle of General Monroe, that had changed. His eyes would flick over her, assessing, never lingering for too long. That professional façade had dropped bit by bit since they’d left Austin, but since the little showdown earlier in the week, something else had crept in. He’d held a knife to her throat, and she’d confessed to liking it, and now …

Charlie’s back to being unable to breathe again. His eyes are lingering once more, but this time, she knows what he’s thinking. She’s a puzzle. One he wants to take apart, piece by piece.

And he wants her to snuggle on top of him, spy on the Patriots, and not think about whether he has a strategy for putting her back together.

Charlie stills, closing her eyes as she fights for control. Because she’s a soldier, his soldier, and she knows the answer to that one. He’s General Monroe. Master strategist. He’s just waiting for her to trigger the plot.

(And maybe it’s something to do with Monroe.)

*

She moves again, and his vision blurs. Fucking mission. Motherfucking Patriot assholes. Thirty or so soldiers, six officers. In and out in sub five minutes. Tonight. After dark.

Sun sets in … four hours. No way can he endure four hours of this. 

Monroe reaches up and taps her leg, two fingers pointing backwards to indicate she should shimmy herself off of him and restore his fucking sanity. They’d already dropped their packs in a small cave a few hundred metres away; they’d wait there, until it’s dark. Five hours. Six to be safe.

Waiting for dark in the dark, the part of him inclined to poetry insists on pointing out. It’ll be easier that way, Monroe reassures himself. He won’t need to look away. Won’t fall victim to her skin, gleaming gold and demanding homage, or that maddening tumble of hair, so insistent on hiding her face from him. 

Maybe he’ll be left alone with his thoughts, for once.

(Golden flesh firm under his fingers; strands in a million shades of gold and bronze tight around his fist. A tug, two, all of her glory landing in his lap. One pass of his hands, and he’ll have her out of that rag that passes for a shirt, sweat sharp at her collarbone and sweeter below the swell of her breasts. Lips, teeth and tongue in a symphony of suck, and she’ll be twisting underneath him, _don’tstopdon’tstopdon’tstop_. But he will, because she needs it that way, needs to learn what she does to him, needs to suffer. A button, a zip, and he’ll spread her wide, make her yell, make her beg. Make her cry and plead and actually use his name before he lets her come, sweet, sweet glory under his tongue.) 

Six hours in the dark with his overactive imagination and Charlie Matheson. His lips twitch unwillingly at the sheer inevitability of it. Rock, meet horribly hard place.

He tenses like a board as she shuffles backwards, refusing to process the momentary press of taut belly on clenched buttocks, the softness of breasts sliding down his back. (Her nipples are hard, and getting harder. He’s not the only one having difficulty with this.) 

At least that stays the same, he thinks resentfully. Since their little escapade, she’d been chilly at first, then more relaxed than he’d ever seen her. He’d taken it as a sign that she might be done thinking about it, and finally open to exploring their weird, tense dynamic. But he’d let his fingers trail over her hand, and when she grabbed it back, stung, it all made sense.

She’s a Matheson. He should be used to it by now, the bonhomie and buddy buddy bullshit applied liberally to mask the stench of denial.

Still, as Mathesons go, she’s been fairly clear. He’s just the messenger, and he’s lucked out this time – she doesn’t even want to shoot him. Instead, she’ll freeze him out, fence herself off, pretend they’re friends. “Not yet,” had been an idle thought, a random grumble. Not a plan of action, or the challenge his perverted mind had skewed it into. 

He can accept that. And for her, and Miles, and maybe even himself, he’s gonna ignore the fact that her body still sparks for him.

(She’s not for him. She never was. And something he always knew shouldn’t hurt like cutting out his own heart.) 

*

Charlie soaks up the sun at the mouth of the cave for a long moment before they follow its path into rear of the shelter, and then increasingly tight tunnel that dims to half light before it takes a sharp bend into the small, hidden chamber where their packs are waiting.

What the hell are they going to do for five hours? (Should make it six, to be safe, Monroe had said. _Fuck_ six.)

She’s jumpy in her skin as she leans back against the cool cave wall, his occasional snarl reminding her not to drum her feet in the dust, or tap against the wall. Monroe had shown her how to mark the hours by the shadow moving across the entrance to the tunnel, then collapsed down onto his pack and hadn’t moved again.

She’d poke him to see if he was dead, but she’s heard old people need their sleep.

Charlie giggles quietly, then pokes her tongue at him when even the rustle in the dark sounds annoyed. He’s barely two metres away – she could probably nudge him with her foot if she tried – but she can’t see anything more than gradations of shadow in the paltry amount of light that makes it this far.

She’s finds herself filling in his features by memory; the blue gaze she can’t quite see in the gloom, the way his curls cling to the side of his head. Whiskers that glow gold, and the curves of his lips between.

The planes of his chest. Undulations of his abdomen. Her mouth goes dry as imagination drifts lower, consuming her with thoughts of proud cock and heavy balls and what he might do if she just crawled over there and … she’s almost relieved when the question springs free of her lips.

“So this thing,” she demands, voice loud in the half dark.

“Whu?” He sounds as if he really was asleep, and Charlie is momentarily guilty. He’d told her once he can only sleep deeply when he feels safe, and it never occurred to her that this hole in the ground, with her, could fit that definition. 

“Sorry. Forget it,” she apologises in a rush. “Go back to sleep.”

He rustles once more, with a little groan that tells her he’s pushing himself upright. 

“Nah. How long’s it been?”

“Just over an hour. Go on – didn’t mean to wake you.”

He shrugs – not that she sees it. Just knows he would. “Nah. You wanted to talk. What was it?”

He had heard her, she realises. There’s a smirk in his voice, and the need to hear her ask again. Fucker.

“This thing. With pain. How did you know?”

“You learn to recognise the signs.”

“Because?”

“Because someone might be like you.”

Her heart speeds up, then starts to gallop.

“Like you, as in you like it too? This is something you do?” 

Somehow, she can see his alarm in the abrupt movement of his arm towards his face. He’s hand is over his mouth, she knows. Scratching a little at the ghost of his moustache, the way he always does when he’s uncomfortable. He hesitates for so long she thinks he’s decided to ignore her, but then he sucks in a breath as if it might be his last, and plunges.

“Yeah. Me and Miles.” 

Charlie blinks through her shock, and pushes down something that feels ridiculously like jealousy. 

It makes a surprising amount of sense. Like everyone else who had grown up in the Republic, she’d heard the rumours since childhood, long before she knew she and General Matheson shared anything more than the same last name. She had dismissed them after meeting her uncle, right up ‘til the moment she saw him and Bass stare each other down that very first time. It had niggled at her for months, that question, but she’d finally set her suspicions aside when Miles settled into domesticity with her mother. 

But she remembers now what Monroe had said after discovering her mother’s vicious plot to neutralise the mustard gas. She hadn’t caught it all – couldn’t bear to hear Miles and Monroe tearing at each other – but she’d had to step between them at one point. “Just close your eyes tonight and apply the Matheson motto: deny, deny, deny!” Monroe had taunted, and Miles had gone pale, then swung his fist at Monroe’s head. Guilt, she realises now.

And to think she thought her family was fucked up before. She refuses to contemplate what this means for her mother – no one bothered to hide the truth from Rachel Matheson – and tries to work around the churning in her gut.

She needs to understand.

“So – this is something you and Uncle Miles did together. Because you both have similar tastes in …” she finds herself at a loss for words, her vocabulary exhausted.

“Kink, Charlie. Miles and I had similar tastes in kink. Him more than me, I guess. He liked pain, and I … I liked Miles. And the things we did together.”

His voice breaks, and it hits her how painful this must be for him. The idea that Miles and Monroe had been … lovers, as well as partners in their empire. So many betrayals, she thinks despairingly. How can he want to have anything to do with us at all?

“How long?” she breathes, as if speaking softly can help his pain. Maybe it was a fleeting thing, just for fun perhaps. Maybe they didn’t actually love each other. (Because she hadn’t seen how it destroyed her uncle, thinking of the man he had left behind. Hadn’t seen Bass, tortured by the fact that Miles had refused to call him brother.)

“Off and on? Since we were kids, really. Nineteen, twenty? Just after we enlisted,” he says idly, as if reciting a shopping list. “After the Blackout, until I met Shelley, then again, once we started the Republic, until your mother came back.”

Charlie has no idea who Shelley is, but can’t help but feed the the spark of hope.

“So you … like women?”

His laugh is rich if bitter. “Oh, Charlie. I don’t just like women. I love them. Miles did too. Difference was, I loved Miles more than anyone else. Even my wife. He didn’t feel the same way.”

She wants to argue, to point to the evidence otherwise, but they both know whose name is going to come up if they start down that path. And she doesn’t want to think about her mother, not in the strange, thick atmosphere building between them. 

He hasn’t moved, and she still can’t see him, but she feels closer to him than she has in months. So she asks.

“Are you over him?”

“No.”

“Will you be, one day?”

“Why?”

He’s been able to see through her, right from day one, Charlie fumes. He knows why.

He knows, but he wants her to say it anyway.

Brave Charlie Matheson, she thinks, and closes her eyes.

“Because my family is fucked up enough. Sharing you with my own uncle would be…”

“Very Matheson of you?”

“I was gonna say perverted.”

There’s no bitterness in his laugh this time. “Same thing, kid. Same thing. Come here.”

She should be offended, but offended doesn't leave her heart in her throat, deafening her. Offended isn't a gush of wetness between her legs, and a stab of lust that doubles her over. Offended isn't so desperate to get to him that she crawls blindly, wants to kiss his feet, and lick her way up until she falls, straight into his mouth.


	3. And I'll bring you, pearls of water on my hips

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay. It might seem I am torturing you, dear reader. But this chapter was just about done when I smelt smoke, and spent the rest of that day hosing down the house and trying to keep the troops from panicking as a grassfire got too close for comfort. And then I thought my smut was too angsty, and I had to rewrite a little. So here you go.

The darkness is both blessing and curse. She keeps straining to see him, but even close enough to feel his breath warm against her cheek, she can’t find his lips. She finds something fluted and delicate under her tongue instead – his ear, she smiles, and sinks her teeth deep into the lobe.

He groans, and a hand is feeling its way around her foot, tracing over her calf and landing on her thigh to pull her towards him. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong thigh, and she overbalances, tipping face-first into the sand. Charlie dissolves into hopeless giggles as his frustrated groan echoes through the cave.

But she cut her teeth on guerilla warfare. Never met a situation she can’t turn to her advantage. Charlie stumbles blindly towards him, then feels her way down the cave wall until they are sitting side by side, bodies heating at shoulder and hip and thigh.

“Monroe. Guess what I’m doing,” she teases, moving away slightly and filling the air between them with quiet rustles. 

“Driving me insane.”

“Not yet. But I know where all my buttons are. And you don’t.”

His intake of breath is almost comical. Almost, because the growl that follows makes her want nothing more than to be stark naked and in his lap. But her hands are clumsy, shaking with emotion, and the double buttons at the top of her jeans refuse to cooperate. Charlie curses as she yanks at them, then almost crows in victory when she’s finally able to peel the tight denim down her legs.

“Fuck. My boots!”

“Charlie. Just get over here. Please.”

She leans into him, using her hands to orient herself. She finds hot skin curving into the mouthwatering lines of neck and shoulder, and the hard swell of his pecs beneath. His pants are still done up, she discovers with a pout, but swings herself astride his lap anyway.

And grinds down.

“You could be inside me, Monroe. I could be riding you right now,” she breathes into the space between them. “But you’re still wearing your pants, so …”

His strangled groan manages to sound amused, even as he grips her hips to force her into stillness. “First rule of fucking an old man, Charlie. You get to come a lot, but I don’t. So steady on. We’ll get there, kid.”

“Not a kid,” she insists, sliding her hand into the gape of his pants. “Or …” she leans forward to rest her forehead against his, whispering in the face of the taboo. “Do you want me to call you Daddy?”

“Point taken. Really not my thing. But you want to know what is?”

“Knives? Guns? Mathesons?”

Her quip is a shade too close to the niggling question she wants to ask outright, but the lust bubbling in her blood insists she’s past caring. It isn’t true, but every pass of his hands, every gravelly promise makes it easier to be convinced.

The name (his name, a nasty little voice hisses unhelpfully) hangs between them until Monroe’s pained snort suggests mentioning it was a bad, bad idea. 

“You got me there. Stand up, Charlie.”

She bites her lip and wonders if he’s changed his mind. Her heart plummets when his hands land of her ass to urge her upwards. Her murmur of protest ends in a girlie squeal when he pulls her in tight to his face, burying his nose in her pubic hair and bathing her sex in puffs of hot breath. The flash of embarrassment evaporates when he tips his head back to drag his tongue along the seam of her sex. Charlie moans as she realises exactly what he plans to do – at best, her sex life had been quick and dirty before now, and frankly, she had thought this was a myth.

Maybe that makes Monroe her fairytale prince, Charlie marvels as his tongue breaches her outer lips, embarking on a thorough exploration of the treasures hidden inside. It’s a slow, luxurious tour that has her undulating over him, keening, self-consciousness obliterated in a mindless flood of almost unbearable pleasure.

“Quiet now, are we? Nothing to say?” he taunts when he lifts his head at one point. She wants to respond, but the words are floating beyond her reach, and she can feel him grinning against her belly, the bastard.

“Let’s see how you deal with this, soldier girl.”

Featherlight touches and long licks give way to stabs and lashes as his tongue torments her clit before plunging rhythmically into the heart of her. His hands, gentle before, clamp hard on her hips, alternately holding her still, then encouraging her to grind down onto his mouth. Gradually (seconds? minutes? centuries?) Charlie learns to follow him, tangling her fingers in his hair to restrain herself, and freeing his hands.

He starts with one finger, her entire body tightening around the invading digit. It’s just seconds before the idle strokes become frustrating, insufficient, and he chuckles as he murmurs in her ear.

“Not enough, angel? Want another?”

The cave fills with desperate, frantic noises that can’t be her, Charlie thinks dazedly. Never her, begging like that, so very carnal and desperate.

“Please. Please Bass. Fuck me. I need – I need – “

“I know what you need, sweetheart. Do you trust me?”

The words trigger an instinctive flinch, but her mind is no longer in charge. He could be General Monroe of old, black uniform, shiny boots and all, and she’d still beg for this. Her trust is such a little thing.

“Yes! Yes – I trust you,” she babbles, and is rewarded by another finger, the stretch making her gasp. He scissors them, pumps, then hooks, and just when she thinks she can’t bear another moment …

He adds a third.

Charlie starts to keen, caught between the burn of ohGodtoomuch and the spasms that drive her down onto his fingers, rolling her hips shamelessly. Her throat is raw and she simply can’t bear it, can’t take another moment when he withdraws his fingers to once more claim her sex with his mouth. Somewhere in the back of her pleasure-crazed mind, Charlie manages to be shocked as Bass slurps and sucks the orgasm from her body, greedy as a child gorging on a favourite fruit.

But maybe she’s the greedy one, because just when she thought she would splinter into a million pieces if he didn’t stop, the delicious tension starts to build again. He’s backed off a little, back to long, gentle licks that chase down every last drop of juice, but the moment her breath stutters to a stop and her thighs start to shake, he drags her clit between his lips and sucks furiously.

This time, she has to bite down on her own hand to keep from screaming. 

*

Bass doesn’t bother to hide his grin when Charlie collapses against him, drained. He’s never felt a woman come quite that hard, her entire body racked with spasms, her pleas guttural and animal-like as she lost all control. One day soon, he vows, he’ll fill a room with candles, just to watch her come.

He doesn’t realise he’s said it aloud until her throaty giggle puffs against his neck. “And what’s wrong with broad daylight? You just need to choose our next mission more carefully,” she says sleepily.

He refuses to think about the fact he has an entire army to run, and this could be the last time it’s just the two of them. Blanchard was already shitting a cow at the fact he’d decided this little problem needed his personal attention. Specially when he’d chosen Charlie, making it look like no more than an elaborate booty call.

Reality was, when it came to reliable assassins, he and Charlie were the only ones he could trust. Not fucking sustainable, the general frets.

“What? No more missions? You gonna to chain me to your bed instead?” she taunts, and laughs when his cock quivers underneath her at the mental image. She slides back a little to give herself room, stroking him through his still-fastened trousers and toying with the zipper.

“And to think they call Miles the tactical genius,” he groans. “I like your plan.”

Her hand falters a little, and he curses himself for mentioning Miles. 

“This is about you and me, right? I’m not just … some substitute?” She sounds uncertain, even shy, and he feels sick to have made her doubt herself like that.

He grabs her hand away and brings it to his mouth. “Absolutely not. The way I want you – it’s about who you are. How you throw yourself into things, body and soul. How you can smile, even when it’s all going to shit.” 

Not like Miles, he wants to say, but if she doesn’t know by now what a miserable bastard her uncle can be, she’ll never see it.

“Nothing to do with Miles,” he says instead, and she purrs at that, tracing his lips with her fingers and surrendering with a breathy little sigh when he sucks them inside.

“God. Feels so good,” she sighs, her entire body melting into his. “But maybe I need my hands for other things,” she hints, punctuating her meaning with a slow, maddening circles of her pelvis.

“Nah,” he mumbles around her fingers. “Shuffle back a bit.” He unbuckles with lightning speed, so intent on releasing himself that he barely notices she has seized back control of her fingers – until they are tracing down his bare chest, scratching at his nipples, scoring his bare belly with sharp, demanding lines of want.

“Try now,” he growls a moment later, and this time, it’s his cock that basks in her attention, her tongue an adept little creature that dances into the weeping slit, tracks circles around the smooth, bald head, and lingers on every ridge. Maybe the first thrust takes her by surprise, or maybe she planned it all along, but he’s seconds from emptying down her throat when she pulls off with a wicked little laugh that spells payback. But she’s still learning, this girl. She has no patience, not in this, and it’s bare moments before she wraps her legs around his waist and lowers herself down onto his rigid cock, taking him deep.

Bass closes his eyes for a moment, needing true darkness to process the silky wonder of Charlie’s body. She’s tighter than he remembers a woman ever being, but it’s not that. Nor is it the way her taut muscles shiver and dance alongside his, desire ravaging them both. It’s something about her surrender, he thinks desperately. Something about the way she has opened herself to him so unreservedly. (He refuses to think the man’s name, not now, but he can feel the cold, hard ball of resentment in his chest loosen a little, no thanks to him.)

This is what it is to be loved, he shouts to the world as Charlie starts to move. This is what it is to be loved.

Her mouth wanders all over his face as she rocks against him, tongue skimming his eyebrow, lips pressed to the bump on his nose. She seems to like his cheekbone, lavishing attention there before following it up until she’s spilling secret after secret into his ear. Some he knows already, others, he would never have suspected, loves and hates and fights and betrayals and how she’s fought it, from the start, this passion she has for him.

“The very start,” she whispers, and he thinks the swimming pool, maybe even in New Vegas.

He’s wrong.

“You saw me,” she breathes as her rhythm starts to stutter. “You ignored my Mom and ignored Danny and stared right at me, and I could see it in your eyes.”

It’s his darkest moment. The day he ordered Strausser to kill her if Rachel didn’t make a choice. But that’s not even the greatest stain on his soul.

“You were so beautiful,” he tells the darkness, fighting back his orgasm. “So fucking fierce. It was as if everything stopped, and the world spun backward. You were there, and everything was different, and all I’ve done since is to try and figure out how.”

And that’s the moment she starts to come, as if his honesty triggers her bliss. The embrace of her body is too much, his balls pulling up tight in response, and he has to lift her bodily from him, crushing her to his chest, spurting against her back in long gouts of release.

“Mmmm, sticky,” she murmurs when her body stops shaking. He’s still shuddering himself, but he fumbles around for his undershirt to wipe her dry.

“Didn’t say I didn’t like it,” she objects, nudging her hand aside with his own and trailing her fingers through the mess. There’s a lascivious slurp, and then another contented “mmm.”

“Tell me you didn’t just suck my cum from your fingers, Charlotte Matheson.”

“It’s dark. You’ll never know,” she retorts, smirk shining in her voice.

He leans in close and hums the words against her mouth. “You’ve just sold me on broad daylight.”


	4. And all the love on my lips

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay. No intention to torture you, just a week travelling and a day or two to whip this into shape. Enjoy.

Their bliss-soaked afternoon gives way to a night they decorate with blood. 

Charlie can feel him every time she moves; the wind hot over beard-burnt skin, her nipples still peaked and raw after hours of constant attention. The dull throb between her legs that suggests that last, hard fuck up against the wall of the cave might have been inadvisable, no matter how hard she came.

She’ll blame that one on the twilight, Charlie smirks. Seeing him limned in the silvery glow, the blue of his eyes suddenly visible and the marks she left on his neck glaring sullenly back at her, she’d dropped her weapons in a heap and attacked him.

“It’s time to go, soldier,” he’d tried to object, but her hands had learnt him in the dark. His buckle and zip had no chance in the twilight, and he was full and hard in her mouth, hands already pulling at her hair.

“Jesus, kid. Not the time. Get the fuck up.”

She lifts her head, exasperated, and springs to her feet to push her body into his.

“You said six hours, to be safe. And no one can see round that overhang.” 

What she doesn't need to say is “and I know you want to”. He’s whispered years of want into every inch of her skin, licked it into her pores, and smeared it all over her back. There’s something else, too, something lurking behind, secret and terrifying. She doesn’t dare to think about it (you came back, she said, and his eyes, his eyes) so she'll hide from that for now, and focus on this. Hard and hot and skin and sex and all the dark, delicious things that vibrate between them.

(She hasn’t forgotten.)

And she’ll need to remember how well cold logic works when he’s … not really him. She doesn’t stop counting tents for a minute, but her sex throbs as she remembers those cold blue eyes flicking over her face, and wandering insolently to her jutting nipples. The way he’d shoved up her bellyshirt to pull and twist at one as he made his decision.

It hurt, but she suspects that had been the point.

“You sure you want me like this?” Ready for battle, emotion locked away, she realises now. The General.

She’d barely been able to squeak her assent before he had torn off her pants and pushed her up the wall, the warm, red rock scraping against her back in a million tiny points of sensation. She had begun to wail, maybe pain, maybe pleasure as he bit at her breasts, teeth unforgiving as his gentle, loving lips had never been. But he was inside her, and everything was hurtling towards her, so hard and fast she couldn’t breathe as he pounded into her. She would have screamed if he hadn’t shoved a hank of her own hair into her mouth. Instead, she whimpered, mute pleas of please don’t stop, please don’t stop, please please please until the world seizes around her, and he’s gone, spilling into the sand with a shout.

“Fuck. Hope no one heard that,” he’d glared at her. She’d screwed up her nose at him, the fake offence all she could manage while she was still trying to find on her own disguise. Charlie Matheson, cold hard killer, and, apparently, the woman who got off on fucking the biggest asshole in the Americas. 

Oh, but she certainly got off, Charlie squirms as her sex starts to throb once more. She’s liquid still, just from the heat of his body next to her as they paused for a final recon, watching the camp below settle into the black dark. The path down is treacherous, but they’d memorised the twists and turns, and the dying moon gave them just enough light to find it. 

They move on the Patriot camp when it finally quiets into stillness. Fifteen or so shuffling regulars, two squads of cadets, six officers they that could count, Charlie keeps telling herself. No survivors.

The cadets are the hardest to kill. Not because of their dead-eyed battle fury, or the knowledge that they had little choice in their fate. Jason’s ghost sits heavy on her shoulders as she moves from one shadow to the next, slitting throats as she goes. She can feel Monroe moving through the other side of the camp, though she doesn’t catch a glimpse of him until their paths converge, behind the now unguarded tents. 

“Whoever knows the most gets an extra hour to live,” Monroe had said quietly before they went in. “There. That tent. All of the incoming riders go to him. That’s our source.”

They cut their way inside, and the man inside lifts his head with the sneer of the long-privileged. “What is it? I’ve given orders not to be disturbed,” he snaps before he gets a good look at their road-worn clothes. Even when he registers they aren’t wearing tan, he’s merely wary, rather than obviously alarmed. “And who would you be?”

“We’re the ones who are gonna ask the questions,” Monroe smiles, toothy and amused. “Usually I'd start with your name, but guess I don't need to know.” He turns to her and waves a courtly hand, every inch the old world grandee. “This, Charlotte, is the very honorable George Bush the tenth or something. Dad and Grandad were both presidents, so he's obviously figured it's his turn now.”

Charlie smiles, then produces the length of rope that will tie their target to the chair. “Nice to meet you Mr Bush. You can call me Charlie,” she says, tossing Monroe a syrupy-sweet smile.

It's the last levity in the room for some time. Bush might be pre-Blackout royalty or something, but he's fit, relatively young, and surprisingly tough. Monroe beats his hands bloody on the man’s face, without getting more than scraps of intel from him. Charlie has seen him use a knife, in the past, but for some reason, this time he doesn’t want to. 

Not a problem Charlie has. 

The next time Monroe takes a break, she pulls out her little eating knife and steps forward, closer and closer until she’s invading the prisoner’s intimate space.

“So, George. Can I call you George? Mr Bush is just so formal,” she coos, and taps the knife against her lips winsomely. “You see, I’m too young to remember formal. Went with the lights, you know?” 

She jerks her head towards Monroe, who is wearing his blank, watchful face, the merest twitch of one eyebrow telegraphing his concern. “This guy here? He wants me to General him here and ‘yes sir’ him there, and I’m like – o-kay. Whatever gets you off.”

Charlie flashes the Patriot leader her sultriest smile, making it clear she’s convinced this man, a shade younger, a shade more polished than her companion, could do the job just fine. Bass practically seethes behind her, and she silently begs him not to react. Trust, doofus. 

She’s close now, pressed into his side, and the bastard is salivating. A little truth mixed in with her lies, and they can see it, glinting in her eyes. She has him. Hook, line, and …

“Because the thing that gets me off? Is killing Patriots. Slow, like. With this really blunt knife. And after I kill you, he’s gonna fuck me – like, a lot. So – can you see my problem here? With you still being alive? Even a little bit?”

She runs the knife longingly across the suddenly frozen Patriot’s jugular and gazes earnestly into his faded blue eyes. Whatever he sees there suddenly has him babbling, answering questions that they haven’t even asked yet.

Bass is trying not to laugh as he commits the names and dates to memory, and follows up with specific questions as to troop movements.

“Please don’t let her have me,” he pleads in the end, and Bass shrugs, merciless.

“Blackout kids, hey? What can you do – they’re savages,” he deadpans, then cuts Bush’s throat before he can panic anymore.

“Nice job, Mata Hari. Pretty damn convincing, there,” Monroe says idly as he cleans his knife on the tail of his shirt. “Almost believed you myself.”

She can almost hear the question in it, the dear man. Charlie hoists herself up onto the dead Patriot's desk, and unbuckles her sword belt. “Come here and I'll tell you how much of it was true.”

“You're covered in blood, Charlie.”

She looks down and grimaces at the bloody handprint that marked Bush's final plea. “Yeeuch. Gross. But …”

He's between her legs within seconds, unzipping and unsnapping and sliding her down onto a cock that's clearly been hard for some time. Charlie can't help but to buck her hips against him, locking her legs around his ass and flopping back onto the table so he can fuck into her with all the ferocity of the silent battle they'd just won.

“Jesus, yes. Please, harder,” she finds herself moaning, then nearly chokes on her tongue as he drags her to him, spins her around then flattens her to the desk. The angle is completely different, and jesusgodinheaven so much better.

She comes with a loud shout, the need for silence no longer pressing. “Guess we'll know whether everyone's dead,” he says with a grin, and she hurtles into manic laughter that makes her sides hurt. He's watching her, she realises as she laughs, and it's something like concern in his eyes, so she bolts from the lamp-lit tent and out into the night.

He finds her by the tiny stream that runs through the bottom of the canyon, scrubbing madly at her bare, bloodsoaked breasts.

“So beautiful, Charlie,” he says quietly, and his gaze is softer than she's ever seen it.

“I'm a monster,” she fires back, refusing to accept his pity. “I killed a dozen men tonight.”

“Yeah. You did. So did I. More, actually. And we tortured a man until he begged for death,” he points out helpfully.

The water is her guilt, she realises, deep and endless. But maybe redemption lies in there too? Charlie plunges her face into the tiny pool, not stopping until she tastes silt, and breathes it in, desperate to be clean.

The world returns in a rush, strong hands on her shoulders, disbelieving blue eyes wide and shocked, his mouth working at a babble of sound she can't hear yet. She shakes in his arms, then starts to punch and kick and bite, railing against war and death and loss and killing and the growing suspicion that she's started to fall in love with it. 

With him. Same, same.

*

Battle madness, Bass knows the minute she starts to laugh. He should have realised earlier, but now he'll never know if that bold as brass saunter was just Charlie, or the altered reality that too much adrenalin creates for some people.

He knows it well. (It's no less you, Miles would say. Just needs handling.)

He pins her, relentless, and hisses into her ear, endearments and threats and orders and pleas alike. 

“Charlie! You need to let it go. Calm down, please baby,” he repeats over and over, pushing hanks of wet hair away from her face, and massaging everywhere he can reach with his big, useless hands.

“I can’t! I’ve tried – Miles just says run it off, Aaron taught me meditation, Mom says you have to look past it and focus on the greater good – but it doesn’t work. None of it works!”

Bass could kick Miles. Yeah, buddy, as if you could run it off. Took you years to handle battle rage, and you weren’t just a kid, either.

But she’s not, he remembers in a devastating avalanche of hopeful logic. Charlie’s not a kid, and they’ve started something, and it’s not like he can leave her like this. He knows what to do …

Even if she doesn’t.

“Let me,” he begs the air between them before he can talk himself out of the idea. Because it might be what brought them together, but it doesn’t mean she’s ready for it, or understands what she’s getting into.

He can help her.

“Let you what?”

“Get rid of some of that tension.”

She smiles, immediately carnal, but not quite comprehending. “We tried that already. Don’t get me wrong – no complaints – but …”

“Not like that.”

Except …

“Not exactly like that. You need something … more.”

Her eyes widen, and her teeth begin to worry at her lower lip. “Oh. Like … what we talked about. At first.”

Bass raises a questioning eyebrow. “If you can’t say it, you’re not ready to do it, kid,” he tries to stop himself. Slow their progress, at least. Ball in her court, he thinks, and part of him hopes she'll knock it out.

The other part drops his voice, finding the raspy lower register that he knows freaks most people out. Some, though … “Tell me what you need.”

Charlie's pupils are suddenly blown with arousal, her bare breasts rising and falling with her quick little breaths. She swallows, then stammers a little. It doesn’t matter.

“I want you to … hurt me. Make me feel it.”

“Feel what?”

She blinks, as if she doesn't understand the question. “The pain. The – arousal. The release.”

He grunts approvingly, then moves behind her, trailing a hand down her throat. “That's the secret, Charlie. People like us, why we do this? It's all about the release. From everything,” he explains, fingers tracing the lines of her neck, then wrapping around.

He pulls her backwards then, not violently, but the startled gasp she lets out tells him it was unexpected. He tightens his hand slowly, so that this time, she'll know what to expect. He counts long moments – just enough to make the stars bloom behind her fluttering eyelids – then loosens his grip.

“But there's one other reason. The most important one, really. Do you trust me, Charlie?”

She'd been tense, before then, but the familiar question makes her relax into him. “Yes.”

“No questions?”

“No.” His heart soars even as he makes a sound of disappointment. “Wrong. There's always one question you need to ask.”

Oh, he's going to enjoy this, Bass thinks. So much.

*

Charlie wants to slap him, but that would involve moving away, and she's not sure she's capable of breaking his grip. Not that she wants to. 

But she can't let that fly past without comment.

“Trust me, I trust you to tell me,” she snarks. Kinky games or not, Monroe can always be relied upon to overshare.

She's chastened a moment later when he whispers it into her ear.

“Your safe word is 'blackout'. Any time you want me to stop, for any reason at all, that's your signal you've had enough.”

“Oh. Understood.” She prays he can't feel the heat of her blush under his hand. She has a safe word. Maggie would be so proud.

“Say it for me.”

“Blackout?” she bleats, and feels the tightness of his fingers ease.

“Good girl. Are you ready to play?”

“God, yes,” she swears, her knees already shaking at the preliminaries. “I'm so ...”

“Quiet,” he snaps, and she blinks a little at the autocratic note in his previously gentle voice. Whoever this version of Bass is, he obviously took more than a few notes from General Monroe. 

“Are you wet, Charlie?” he croons a moment later, and she nods cautiously. “Tell me.”

“So wet, Bass. Dripping. So excited,” she confesses, and then can't resist the urge to grind down a little on the hand that's wandering back and forth between her legs. It vanishes immediately.

“Naughty girl. Do I need to use my knife?”

She stops breathing, and it's nothing to do with the hand still fastened around her throat. 

“Yes, sir,” she moans. Obedience is obviously a thing, and she's not supposed to initiate. (And she will do anything, say anything, to find out what he plans to do with that knife.)

“You'd like that, wouldn't you. Too easy, Charlotte. Too soon. One day, I'll cut you, and it will be on pure white sheets, so you can see the pretty patterns we'll make. And it will be sublime – not a make-do thing on the battle field, because you need to vent. It'll be about art, and beauty, and the white-hot brilliance of it all. But for now ...”

She's shaking, waiting for him to decide her fate. He sounds a little deranged, if she's honest. But then, she's the one biting her tongue, rubbing her legs together, on the verge of begging.

The blade travels up her thigh, scrapes over the thatch of curls covering her mound, and continues its path north over the terrain of belly, and ribs, and the ticklish skin on the underside of her breasts. Her heart is trying to fly free of her chest, and she thinks it has succeeded in the moment he nudges at her nipple with the blade, pressing the proud flesh back into its cushiony parent, then smiling a little as it springs free, even bolder than before, as the knife continues to move upwards.

“Where do you think, Charlotte? Where do you want to wear my real mark?”

She has to clear her throat twice before her voice will work. “Somewhere obvious. Somewhere people will see it,” she pleads, shocked at the neediness in her voice. Who is this girl?

“You want them to know you belong to me?”

She's never wanted anything more in her life, she realises, suddenly horrified. But she's trapped in the moment, already talking, begging for him to brand her. “Yes. Whereever you want to. Please.”

He rewards her with a swift, biting kiss. He is Bass again in that moment, his awe at her surrender so bright and joyous, but it lasts just moments before the mask returns.

“You deserve something magnificent, but that'll come. Something simple for today, I think. Crossed swords, here,” he murmurs into her skin, lips sliding along her collarbone to caress the pad of muscle where her shoulder curved into her upper arm. 

“Are you ready, Charlie?”

She nods, mute with excitement. He laughs, and sets aside the knife for a moment to slide his fingers between her thighs, smearing the wetness about before settling her over him. She groans, simultaneously annoyed and thankful as his cock spears up into her, a beloved discomfort rather than the novelty she had braced herself for.

He makes love to her slowly this time, the lift and slide almost effortless due to her drenched state. She's beginning to lose her breath, almost ready to forget about anything other than this blissful slow fuck, when she feels the blade bite into her arm.

It's white hot, agonising, but he's finished already, dropping kisses into her hair and kicking it up a gear, powerful arms lifting her up and gravity tugging her down, faster and faster until she can't help but take over the rhythm …

another cut, a clean slice across the first, blazing on her arm, ripping through her, blasting away everything she's done and everything she is and creating nothing but sheer sensation, feeling, her body the only thing that's real.

And him. Bass. Monroe. The General. All of them, in one. All real.

All hers, she knows now. If she's brave enough.

(She loves him. And he loves her. This is their truth, even if the words haven't yet been sung.)


	5. All the love from my lips

The song finds her not in his wide, white bed, or even by his side in battle. It's in the scathing glance of a woman she respects, and a snide whisper. 

She's pushing her way through the crowded bar with Benson when it happens. “Make way for the general's whore,” someone says _sotto voce_. Charlie just ignores it, but the second regiment captain stops dead, her mouth open.

“My God, that makes me mad. Just because you're young and pretty, they assume you're sleeping with him! He must be 20 years older than you, but of course you're going to crawl in his bed the first chance you get,” Lacey Benson fumes.

Charlie realises that maybe they've been a bit too circumspect when the gossips know about her lovelife, but her friends don't. She glances over to the other side of the crowded room, where Bass is waiting for them, then gives her companion a wry smile.

“Well, to be fair it wasn't the _first_ chance. I tried to kill him a few times before that,” she says. “But – we are together. Like that, I mean.”

The other woman's jaw drops, her gaze travelling incredulously to their superior officer. She recovers quickly, but not before Charlie sees the judgement creep into her eyes. Benson is a good fighter, but it's her professionalism that Bass prizes above everything, and Charlie has just trodden all over it.

Oops.

Her contrition fades in seconds when Benson continues to look like she's sucked on a lemon. Charlie lifts her chin stubbornly, then flicks her long, unbraided hair back over her shoulder, making the carefully groomed Captain sneer. She obviously _had_ heard the gossip about why Charlie hadn't been forced back into uniform yet, even though it had been seven weeks since their mission. Bass has been musing about irregulars, and guerillas and spies, and using her as his eyes and ears in the camp. Charlie knows there's a plan brewing, but to everyone else ...

Fuck 'em. They don't know Monroe like she does, and she's just waiting for the plan to tumble out. Maybe by the time she gets back from Willoughby he'll be ready to talk about it, something more than that look he gets sometimes, sidelong and assessing, as if she's a tool he's trying to decide whether or not to use.

But she knows what he thinks of her. And she prays he knows what she thinks of him. But maybe praying isn't enough.

“Yeah, catch you later, Lace,” she says shortly, and resumes her trek towards her lover.

“General,” she greets him.

“Miss Matheson,” he responds, eyes crinkling with joy. He startles a little when she steps close, closer than they normally do in public, then smiles brilliantly when she nestles into his body.

“I'm in love with you,” she says simply, and reaches up to kiss him. Bravery tastes sweet, she finds. Lush and forgiving, the past a song they've lived, but no longer need to sing.

“I know. I love you too,” he whispers into her mouth when their lips part. “You really up for drinking tonight?”

“Nah. My drinking partner just dropped me, and my man doesn't like to drink much when he's on duty.”

“He's always on fucking duty,” Bass grumps, then pushes himself to his feet. “I'm declaring this the General's night off.”

“Hmmm. Good plan. But I leave for Willoughby at dawn, so a hangover would be bad. Might just have to fill the time some other way.”

“Think I know what might work.”

Their lovemaking is slow and delicious, his need to deny her pleasure then drown her in it filling the night with frustrated cries and moans. When he finally lets her come, she exhausts herself with it, sliding half into sleep as he traces a design on her back with slow swoops of his pinkie finger.

She’d thought it was his M, the first time he did this, but when she asked, he was revolted by the idea. And it changes and evolves, so she knows he is creating something new.

Something just for her. 

“Do you trust me?” he asks, and she's alert once more. Vibrating with need as he pulls the sterilised blade from the bedside drawer, and lays it against her back.

Five cuts, tiny lines against the slope of her shoulder blade, five flashes of white hot glory, the start of something beautiful. He tapes gauze to them afterwards, and drops a reverent kiss on top of the dressing.

“My angel,” he smirks, and it’s so far from the reality of who she is, they both collapse into laughter. Later, though, when their hilarity explodes into heat, those are the words he is moaning as he bucks up into her, emptying himself deep.

Charlie can’t quite envision herself as anyone’s angel, but Bass is the only person she’d ever allow to idealise her that way. There’s love, warts and all, and then there’s “I’ve waded into battle next to you and left bloody handprints all over your body.”

She rides into Willoughby late the next afternoon, and after awkward hugs all around, settles down to dinner at Gene's rickety kitchen table. She takes her jacket off, and doesn't realise the bandage is peeking out from the top of her tank until Rachel's hand drifts over it with a motherly tut tut. Miles just stares, eyes black with fury.

Charlie smiles sweetly, philosophical. Looks like she won't need to break the news to them after all.

He grabs her the next morning as she heads to the outhouse.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Nothing to do with you,” she tells him, head high.

Miles looks away, two spots of chagrin burning high on his cheeks, unable to broach the topic. She’s about to take pity on him, murmur something conciliatory and walk away, when he bites.

“He’s not for you, Charlie. Bass can’t love you.”

Her heart breaks a little then. He can’t even admit why this is so difficult for him, the poor, stupid man. But hiding from the truth never did them any favours.

“Oh, Miles. You may have fucked him first, but then you fucked him over. Over and over again,” she sneers, trying not to roll her eyes at the shock on her uncle’s face. Yes, Uncle Miles, Bass and I talk. Some people do.

“He was able to forgive you, but he’ll never trust you again. Not the way he trusts me,” she says, more gently.

Miles is pale at the revelation, and she winces a little, knowing trust is an Achilles heel that Bass and Miles share. And none of them are ignorant of the very special meaning it has in the context of certain relationships.

And as cruel as it is, she needs Miles to know.

Charlie steps in close, and whispers straight into her uncle’s ear. “It’s not your M. It never will be. Ever again.”

She walks away then. They’d known this wouldn’t be easy, but she’s made her choice. Her future is out there with Bass, and until Miles can see them together and smile, she’s done with Willoughby and the remnants of her family.

“Goodbye Uncle Miles,” she whispers, and heads out into the midmorning glare. Five hours to Austin – maybe six – and she’ll be home again. Where she’s meant to be.

And maybe tonight, he’ll punish her a little, for daring to leave. The thought of it has her smiling all the way home.

**_Two months later_ **

She moans into the gag as he presses the blade carefully into her back. Times like these, Bass wishes he had three hands – one to hold her down, one for the art, and another to sop up the evidence of just how much Charlie gets off on this. Her thighs are glistening in the candlelight, sticky almost to her knees, but it’s the smell that torments him, begging him to set aside the knife and spread her wide.

His attention wavers at the very thought of it, and the line he’s been so careful to keep straight veers slightly away from his target. Focus, asshole, he orders himself. She deserves perfection.

The correction is tiny, and Charlie smells like a feast by the time he rubs the pigment into the freshly drawn line. He can’t bear to look away from the design etched on her back, though, so nudges her up onto all fours and slides inside her, filling his senses with the soft, wet clutch of her around his cock. The urgency is already building – she’s pushing back into him, trying to make him slam home – but he resists, needing to savour the moment. She’ll fly soon enough, his angel, his love.

He’s given her wings, feathering out from her shoulder blades, a thousand tiny cuts embellished with a cascade of colour. And between them, a skull, grinning with malice, but decorated with interlocking letters that make it as beautiful as they are. (And none of them, ever again, an M.)

He calls her angel, and if the world assumes she’s sweet and forgiving, so be it. He knows the truth, and so do those who fall to her, his Angel of Death.

(She’ll flash that heaven-sent grin to lure them in, all the while fondling the edge of her sword.)

 

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there you have it people. Hope it was fun. And as much as I tried to resist the urge, this ended in a place that leapfrogs nicely into my primary idea for my upcoming "Revolution, Season 3" fic. That is yet to be written, but definitely lives in my head. Very much Charlie centric, rather than spanning the full cast, but I will try to avoid it descending into "the continuing erotic adventures of Charlie and Monroe." Though there will probably be some element of that, because, come on. That's FUN. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and if you want to complain, critique or otherwise, comments are blessed fodder for the muse.


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